(Self)-Portrait: Images and Networks

"The Self-Portrait in the Visual Arts" is the subject of works by contemporary artists in the realms of photography, painting and sculpture due to be shown in an upcoming exhibition at the Schwules Museum.

Since art’s earliest origins, visual artists have been preoccupied with the human image. Furthermore, exploring one’s own self has posed an eternal challenge to all people who work creatively, be it in the form of more or less unbridled, staged self-display or, quite the opposite, as the masking or dissemblance of the subject’s identity.

Along these lines, the exhibition presents an extensive ensemble of self-portraits by Boris von Brauchitsch who with a mixture of narcissism and pitilessness has observed the process of change and ageing in himself over a period of 25 years. By contrast, Sascha Weidner, a photographer of the younger generation who poetically alienates his subjects, has depicted himself by means of masking or veiling.

A further large group of works belongs to the series “B2B” by the Hamburg artist Jan-Holger Mauss who over a protracted period asked more than 120 fellow artists to portray him wearing a bikini. In "B2B" Mauss explores collaborative forms of self-portraiture. Engaging in networking, he has stimulated artist colleagues to cooperate with him, persuading them to portray him in a fishnet bikini. This practice again raises the question of authorship, of what stake in a portrait can be claimed respectively by model and artist – who actually "created" the image? In this exhibition at the Schwules Museum Mauss is showing a personal selection and arrangement of the over 120 works that have by now accrued in this project, which offer a specific view of his own person – as a model, a colleague or friend and a curator all in one.

In addition, the exhibition will also include selected works from the permanent collection of the Schwules Museum which address and expand on the show’s overriding theme.